I was struck by the spin of the article and the fact that China wasn't discussed till the last paragraphs and then only in the context of what google rival yahoo did. Google has caved the the Chinese and censors the activities of Chinese users daily.

on this we agree AL, google puts profits in front of freedom.

I don't think you'll find many here saying: "If you're not doing something wrong, you have nothing to be afraid of."

Also - all of us who think that this new medium is a replacement for the old mainstream media, who think that our voices are powerful and safe - have to realize that most of us blog on these FREE platforms, we don't own this space, these servers, none of it - and it can be ripped away in an instant.

So, I'm to assume from the comments, that Google, a private company, has an obligation to push free speech rights globally? Do GM, Apple, and McDonalds have the same obligation? Do the stockholders agree?

I thought the NYT article did a good job of describing the mess that exists in international law and politics over free speech and the limits imposed on it by various countries. Gee, if only they all had and enforced our own First Amendment! Gee, if only the FCC and Congress did, too!

Having lived in China both before and after the big introduction of www.google.cn, I have to say that I get a more reliable connection with the latter (those local servers...). I'm on Google all day, every day, because I get better results usually than I do with Baidu or Sogou, and none of the U.S.-based substitutes I've ever seen could do a remotely decent job searching in Chinese. I'll continue to Google on in the meantime.

Of course, I'm usually not sitting here searching for information on free tibet or falun gong. Anytime I am, I just do what everyone else does and use a proxy. In the meantime, Google actually tells me when the government has censored the results, and I appreciate that.

Private Browsing, is not totally private. It is only private for cookies. Your IP address is still available to the server you are accessing. Google (or who ever) could store your info locally instead of in your computer in a cookie. Using an anonymizer my help with that aspect of privacy, but don't count on it.

I'd say the threat is far greater that Google would institute such restrictions due to political correctness coming from the incoming Obama administration. Anything critical of Obama could be dubbed as "dangerous to the State," as has been the case in the past in Communist nations, and censored or even eliminated.

We're seeing the most Leftwing Pro-Communist President of our lifetimes. He had a voting record of a perfect 100 as a Socialist. His top advisors actively support the Fairness Doctrine.

What's to stop him from putting pressure on Google to cut off libertarian and other blogs critical of his policies?

Everybody on this thread so far has taken a defensive posture as to data. The fact is when a small percentage of the population start taking active defensive measures -- false data, dual accounts, lying half the time, etc the data store becomes corrupt and less useful power that be. Only by corrupting the data store can one even attempt to think one is 'safe'.

I'm not particularly worried about Google. If you think you have or have every had any guarantee of of anonymity on the Internet then you are simply mistaken. Every packet, click, and search is logged by the people who own the servers and infrastructure you're using, unless you take very specific steps to avoid it. And most people simply do not care enough about privacy to even bother learning what those steps might be. Which is perfectly rational.

Nobody's forcing anyone to use Google. The reason for their current position is that they're very good at what they do. And what they do is collect, correlate, analyze, and monetize search and browsing habits. If Google screws up they'll find themselves in the junkyard with Altavista, Webcrawler, and other former search-engine powerhouses.

Personally, I'd be more comfortable using a browser promulgated by Halliburton; at least there's no confusion about who/what H is, whereas Google has this persistent mystique of benevolence that imparts a strangely Weimar vibe.

If some government moron - and I know they're morons because I used to work for the government (I'm sure the average IQ of FEMA was halved when I quit) - wants to waste his/her time and our tax dollars perusing my Google search history, that's fine by me.

They'll find out I like curvaceous women - redheads especially - and that I'm constantly looking up historical persons on Wikipedia.